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mk  ·  4779 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Aggregators: problems and solutions.
Thanks notseamus. First off, the tags are a tough one. As I said to keinbl00, I almost would like to give them a different name, as they are intended as a degree of freedom as much as a categorizing mechanism. Adding a more tags to a post solves some problems, but it introduces others. One big problem is that tags might be used as a way to get attention. For example, if you know that #kittens, #countrymusic and #pasta are the most popular tags, you might throw one of those in your post, not because it is relevant, but because it will get you the most eyeballs. #OWS and #occupywallstreet are two tags for the same thing, however, if you are very interested in the topic, you will probably follow both. Also, even if I am not following #OWS or #occupywallstreet I know what the post pertains to. -That serves a purpose.

Another benefit of the single tag, is that some tags take on a life of their own, which IMO lends to community interaction. For example, caio's #writebetterdammit or #thehumancondition, which I started. (Btw, we should be able to hotlink tags in posts and comments.)

Finally, as you mention, as the site grows, allowing multiple tags increases the number of feeds that each post gets into, and in turn, will speed up any given feed, likely accompanied by a loss of tag fidelity. As you allude to, that would require another layer of filtering, which might just be solving a problem that we helped to create. I'm sure that I'm going to be having this conversation a lot. I realize that I might be wrong, and I also see how the single tag seems like it can be improved upon. We'll see how it goes.

As for moderation, my preference is that most undesirable content can simply be avoided. Moderation should be limited, and applied in a manner that's consistent as possible. It might be worth putting up a page of dead links that have been killed. I wouldn't want them to be functional posts, but it might be a good thing for everyone to see. I'm thinking a lot on this.

I'll see what I can do about the '?'. I'm not much of a tabber, but I am sure many are. :)

I like the follow system, but I worry that in the future that some people might slip under the radar. I like browsing hubski/all to see what's actually being posted, is there some sort of useful synthesis of the two systems?

It will be interesting when we hit the point that we are missing more posts than we are seeing. I want to be there and experience it a bit before deciding what, if any, action should be taken, but I've thought about it. One positive I see, is that if someone submits just one good post, it has the potential to spread across the whole community. But we might need to make some better discovery tools if the current setup doesn't scale well.

Another usability thing is the ability to edit post titles. Fine now while the site is small, but conceivably a popular post could be maliciously rerouted in the future. Should there be a time limit on the ability to edit post titles?

That might be necessary.